Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Kresz: the 'anti-Sense8'?

Reading J Michael Straczynski's interview on his new show Sense8, made with the Wachowskis, I realised they had turned my idea of Kresz development on its head.

The Kresz used to be plagued with House Wars, each fighting the other for supremacy, and causing a lot of death and suffering as a result. But with the 'emergence' the Kresz developed their empathic sense, feeling the emotions and physical suffering of other Kresz as if it were their own. That brought a sudden stop to the House Wars as fighting between Kresz became impossible.

Sense8 tracks the emergence of an empathic ability in eight individuals across Earth. They can access each other's emotions instantly - but it also goes a bit further. They can talk to the other sensates even when on a different continent and - by the look of the trailers - they can also access the skills of the other sensates. But it was the origin of the sens8 ability that made me think of the Kresz. Here's a snippet from JMS's interview:

Our theory was that originally we’re all sensate, and we all had
this ability. The mutation was those who are born without the ability
because they’re more efficient killers. If you can’t feel that person’s
pain, it’s easy to wipe that person out. Over time, those individuals
outnumbered those who were sensate.

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SF quotes

"the Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state as well as more efficient at using it once they had. That was good enough for the Culture."— Iain M. Banks